The government is under pressure to introduce restrictions on people entering the UK from China amid surging Covid cases in the country.
Ministers on Thursday said they were reviewing whether to require travellers from China to take the tests – 24 hours after saying they had no plans to introduce mandatory checks – but were not taking direct action.
The US announced on Wednesday that all arrivals from China from 5 January would have to provide a negative test result taken no more than two days before their flight.
India, Italy, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan have also said they would place restrictions on travellers arriving from China, after Beijing announced it was abandoning its Covid-zero policy and preparing to reopen its borders.
Experts and former ministers said the UK government should be moving more quickly to ensure public safety.
University of Warwick virologist, Professor Lawrence Young said the government’s decision to delay restrictions was “dangerous” and risked introducing a new variant to the UK.
“We are opening ourselves up to more infections and we’re running the risk of new variants coming into the country,” Professor Young told The Independent.
“If we’re not monitoring as people arrive, we’re putting ourselves at great risk,” he added.
“There’s a general sense of complacency around Covid, although infections and hospitalisations are still quite high.
“When you have something that’s such a widespread infection in such a large population like China where we’re seeing severe disease and death, although the official numbers aren’t quite matching what’s on the ground, then we know we’ve got an issue where there’s more infection and the potential development of new variants from that.”
Speaking on Thursday afternoon, health minister Will Quince said the government believed the”key threat” would be whether there was any new Covid variant from China, adding that “there’s no evidence at this point”.
“A lot of people will be concerned about the news coming out of China,” he said.
“The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay) met with the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency and the chief medical officer this morning, so it’s being taken incredibly seriously by the Government.
“The key threat is any new variant. There’s no evidence at this point of a new variant from China, a variant that is not already prevalent here in the UK.
“But, nevertheless, we’re keeping the situation very much under review.”
China said it would end its zero Covid policy from January
Speaking on a visit to Manchester airport on Thursday Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the idea of introducing more restrictions was being looked at “as we speak” and that there could be an announcement on Thursday or Friday.
But speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, former health minister Lord Bethell praised Italy’s “sensible” approach of quarantining those who test positive on arrival.
This strategy would allow results to be trusted and for genomic testing to be carried out to understand whether any new variants are emerging, he said.
“I think there are different reasons to bring in testing – one is the American approach which is pre-testing to slow the spread.”
An officer collects passports from residents for renewal and re-applications at a community police station in Beijing
